1
The Third Level
Jack Finney
Before you read
Have you ever had any curious experience which others nd hard to
believe?
THE presidents of the New York Central and the
New York, New Haven and Hartford railroads
will swear on a stack of timetables that there
are only two. But I say there are three, because
I’ve been on the third level of the Grand Central
Station. Yes, I’ve taken the obvious step: I talked
to a psychiatrist friend of mine, among others. I
told him about the third level at Grand Central
Station, and he said it was a waking-dream
wish fulfillment. He said I was unhappy. That made my wife kind
of mad, but he explained that he meant the modern world is full
of insecurity, fear, war, worry and all the rest of it, and that I just
want to escape. Well, who doesnt? Everybody I know wants to
escape, but they don’t wander down into any third level at Grand
Central Station.
But that’s the reason, he said, and my friends all agreed.
Everything points to it, they claimed. My stamp collecting, for
example; that’s a ‘temporary refuge from reality.’ Well, maybe, but
my grandfather didn’t need any refuge from reality; things were
pretty nice and peaceful in his day, from all I hear, and he started
my collection. It’s a nice collection too, blocks of four of practically
What does
the third level
refer to?
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every U.S. issue, first-day covers, and so on. President Roosevelt
collected stamps too, you know.
Anyway, here’s what happened
at Grand Central. One night last
summer I worked late at the office.
I was in a hurry to get uptown to
my apartment so I decided
to take the subway from
Grand Central because
it’s faster than the bus.
Now, I don’t know
why this should have
happened to me.
I’m just an ordinary
guy named Charley,
thirty-one years old,
and I was wearing a
tan gabardine suit
and a straw hat
with a fancy band;
I passed a dozen men who looked just like me. And I wasn’t trying to
escape from anything; I just wanted to get home to Louisa, my wife.
I turned into Grand Central from Vanderbilt Avenue, and went
down the steps to the first level, where you take trains like the
Twentieth Century. Then I walked down another flight to the second
level, where the suburban trains leave from, ducked into an arched
doorway heading for the subway — and got lost. That’s easy to do.
I’ve been in and out of Grand Central hundreds of times, but I’m
always bumping into new doorways and stairs and corridors. Once
I got into a tunnel about a mile long and came out in the lobby of
the Roosevelt Hotel. Another time I came up in an office building
on Forty-sixth Street, three blocks away.
Sometimes I think Grand Central is growing like a tree, pushing
out new corridors and staircases like roots. There’s probably a long
tunnel that nobody knows about feeling its way under the city right
now, on its way to Times Square, and maybe another to Central
Park. And maybe — because for so many people through the years
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The Third Level
Grand Central has been an
exit, a way of escape — maybe
that’s how the tunnel I got
into... But I never told my
psychiatrist friend about that
idea.
The corridor I was in began angling
left and slanting downward and I thought
that was wrong, but I kept on walking. All
I could hear was the empty sound of my
own footsteps and I didn’t pass a soul. Then
I heard that sort of hollow roar ahead that
means open space and people talking.
The tunnel turned sharp left; I went down
a short flight of stairs and came out on the
third level at Grand Central Station. For just a
moment I thought I was back on the second level,
but I saw the room was smaller, there were fewer
ticket windows and train gates, and the information
booth in the centre was wood and old-looking. And
the man in the booth wore a green eyeshade and
long black sleeve protectors. The lights were dim and
sort of flickering. Then I saw why; they were open-
flame gaslights.
There were brass spittoons on the floor, and
across the station a glint of light caught my eye;
a man was pulling a gold watch from his vest
pocket. He snapped open the cover, glanced
at his watch and frowned. He wore a
derby hat, a black four-button suit
with tiny lapels, and he had
a big, black, handlebar
mustache. Then I
looked around and
saw that everyone in
the station was dressed
like eighteen-ninety-
something; I never saw so
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many beards, sideburns and fancy mustaches in my life. A woman
walked in through the train gate; she wore a dress with leg-of-
mutton sleeves and skirts to the top of her high-buttoned shoes.
Back of her, out on the tracks, I caught a glimpse of a locomotive,
a very small Currier & Ives locomotive with a funnel-shaped stack.
And then I knew.
To make sure, I walked over
to a newsboy and glanced at the
stack of papers at his feet. It was
The World; and The World hasn’t been
published for years. The lead story said
something about President Cleveland.
I’ve found that front page since, in the
Public Library files, and it was printed
June 11, 1894.
I turned toward the ticket windows
knowing that here — on the third level at Grand Central — I could
buy tickets that would take Louisa and me anywhere in the United
States we wanted to go. In the year 1894. And I wanted two tickets
to Galesburg, Illinois.
Have you ever been there? It’s a wonderful town still, with
big old frame houses, huge lawns, and tremendous trees whose
branches meet overhead and roof the streets. And in 1894, summer
evenings were twice as long, and people sat out on their lawns, the
men smoking cigars and talking quietly, the women waving palm-
leaf fans, with the fire-flies all around, in a peaceful world. To be
back there with the First World War still twenty years off, and World
War II over forty years in the future... I wanted two tickets for that.
The clerk figured the fare — he glanced at my fancy hatband,
but he figured the fare — and I had enough for two coach tickets,
one way. But when I counted out the money and looked up, the
clerk was staring at me. He nodded at the bills. ‘‘That ain’t money,
mister,’’ he said, ‘‘and if you’re trying to skin me, you won’t get very
far,’’ and he glanced at the cash drawer beside him. Of course the
money was old-style bills, half again as big as the money we use
nowadays, and different-looking. I turned away and got out fast.
There’s nothing nice about jail, even in 1894.
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The Third Level
And that was that. I left the same way I came,
I suppose. Next day, during lunch hour, I drew
three hundred dollars out of the bank, nearly
all we had, and bought old-style currency (that
really worried my psychiatrist friend). You can
buy old money at almost any coin dealer’s, but
you have to pay a premium. My three hundred
dollars bought less than two hundred in old-style
bills, but I didn’t care; eggs were thirteen cents
a dozen in 1894.
But I’ve never again found the corridor that
leads to the third level at Grand Central Station,
although I’ve tried often enough.
Louisa was pretty worried when I told her all this, and didn’t
want me to look for the third level any more, and after a while I
stopped; I went back to my stamps. But now we’re both looking,
every weekend, because now we have proof that the third level is
still there. My friend Sam Weiner disappeared! Nobody knew where,
but I sort of suspected because Sam’s a city boy, and I used to tell
him about Galesburg — I went to school there — and he always
said he liked the sound of the place. And that’s where he is, all
right. In 1894.
Because one night, fussing with my stamp collection, I found —
Well, do you know what a first-day cover is? When a new stamp is
issued, stamp collectors buy some and use them to mail envelopes
to themselves on the very first day of sale; and the postmark proves
the date. The envelope is called a first-day cover. They’re never
opened; you just put blank paper in the envelope.
That night, among my oldest first-day covers, I found one that
shouldn’t have been there. But there it was. It was there because
someone had mailed it to my grandfather at his home in Galesburg;
that’s what the address on the envelope said. And it had been there
since July 18, 1894 — the postmark showed that — yet I didn’t
remember it at all. The stamp was a six-cent, dull brown, with a
picture of President Garfield. Naturally, when the envelope came to
Granddad in the mail, it went right into his collection and stayed
there — till I took it out and opened it.
Would Charley ever
go back to the ticket-
counter on the third
level to buy tickets
to Galesburg for
himself and
his wife?
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The paper inside wasn’t blank. It read:
941 Willard Street
Galesburg, Illinois
July 18, 1894
Charley
I got to wishing that you were right. Then I got to believing you were
right. And, Charley, its true; I found the third level! Ive been here two weeks,
and right now, down the street at the Daly’s, someone is playing a piano,
and they’re all out on the front porch singing ‘Seeing Nelly Home.’ And I’m
invited over for lemonade. Come on back, Charley and Louisa. Keep looking
till you nd the third level! It’s worth it, believe me!
The note is signed Sam.
At the stamp and coin store I go to, I found out that Sam bought
eight hundred dollars’ worth of old-style currency. That ought to set
him up in a nice little hay, feed and grain business; he always said
that’s what he really wished he could do, and he certainly can’t go
back to his old business. Not in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1894. His
old business? Why, Sam was my psychiatrist.
Reading with Insight
1. Do you think that the third level was a medium of escape
for Charley? Why?
2. What do you infer from Sam’s letter to Charley?
3. ‘The modern world is full of insecurity, fear, war, worry and
stress.’ What are the ways in which we attempt to overcome
them?
4. Do you see an intersection of time and space in the story?
5. Apparent illogicality sometimes turns out to be a futuristic
projection? Discuss.
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The Third Level
6. Philately helps keep the past alive. Discuss other ways in
which this is done. What do you think of the human tendency
to constantly move between the past, the present and the
future?
7. You have read ‘Adventure’ by Jayant Narlikar in Hornbill
Class XI. Compare the interweaving of fantasy and reality
in the two stories.
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